The Return of the Cob House

20/09/2017

Cobbauge will promote the construction of cob houses in the Channel area by developing, testing and creating new low carbon and energy efficient cob mixes*.

Cob houses have existed in the South of England and North of France for hundreds of years, with the some houses in the UK dating back to the early 14th century. However the construction industry has be unable to create a cob material that meets both thermal and structural building regulations.

CobBauge, will go about changing this by creating and testing four new cob mixes that will be thermally and structurally tested to ensure they meet building regulations and significantly improve household energy efficiency.

The newly created cob mixes will be produced from local soils, helping reduce CO2 production emissions by 38% compared to the production of traditional masonry materials. It will also reduce construction waste by 16 tonnes per property – a saving of 2115 euros in terms of landfill costs.

The results of the project and cob mixes will then be shared with a network of builders and other professionals in the construction industry to encourage the construction of cob houses.

Once the demand for the cob materials has been established, a second phase of the project, CobBauge 2, will publish building guidelines for the new cob mixes and train over 500 builders and other professionals in cob construction methods. It is hoped that this will then lead to the construction of 1500 ‘CobBauge’ buildings over a 10 year period.

*Cob is a mixture of earth and fibres, such as straw, which is then mixed with water and used to construct buildings.

The France (Channel) England Programme is co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF).